Dead or Alive 5's 'fighting entertainment' means even crazier stages

Team Ninja pulled an Apple-style "one more thing" at its pre-TGS party, announcing Dead or Alive 5 at the last minute and showing an early trailer.

At that event, studio head Yosuke Hayashi called DOA 5 a "fighting entertainment" game, something distinct from other fighting games.

Later, in an interview at Tecmo's TGS booth, I asked Hayashi to clear up that terminology. The early generation of fighting games, around Street Fighter 2, he said, "had some of the most outrageous graphics, fun gameplay, and really a lot of stuff going on." He implied that, in comparison, modern fighting games emphasize online competition over wowing players with unprecedented visuals.

"It's not as over-the-top, it's not as much of the entertainment aspect that the originals had, and so they seem a little bit dull, in some aspects." The term "fighting entertainment" represents an effort to return spectacle to the genre.

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